


Bad Air

by Purple_Slippers_18



Series: One Hundred Threads [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombielock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:56:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5868469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Slippers_18/pseuds/Purple_Slippers_18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all seemed like an epic Greek tragedy: a doctor and a soldier, wounded in battle and invalided back home where the steel and glass of the city left him feeling more alone then when he’d been bleeding to death in the desert. With nothing but his cane and a scar on his shoulder, this foolish man had looked out over the great grey endlessness of London and wished for something to happen to him.</p><p>Three days later, the Walkers came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 028

John Watson hissed through his teeth and dug the heel of his palms against his eyes. The daylight was so blinding his vision had gone white the moment he emerged from the Underground, adding a hot hellish ache to the rest of his body’s ails. John leaned against the cool grey stone of the station wall, breathing hard, collecting his thoughts, seeking relief, urging his brain to fight the pain, to make it nothing more than a half-remembered twinge from a dream, just like his limp had become the day the world had ended.

In retrospect it all seemed like an epic Greek tragedy, the kind that was studied in secondary school: a doctor and a soldier, wounded in battle and invalided back home where the steel and glass of the city left him feeling more alone then when he’d been bleeding to death in the desert. With nothing but his cane and a scar on his shoulder, this foolish man had looked out over the great grey endlessness of London and wished for something to happen to him.

Three days later, the Walkers came.

John banged his head against the station wall, relishing the distracting throb. He didn’t want to remember what life had been like before; he didn’t want to think about how he had changed from the moment that first report of the unknown plague was broadcast on BBC One; he would go mad if he did. Instead he thought about the sun warming his skin for the first time in days. He thought about Stratford Station, about the cement barricades and mountains of sandbags. He remembered the feeling of utter impotence as the soldiers there offered him pitying glances but refused his help, only to have that ache be replaced with a euphoric, adrenaline coursing high when the quarantine was breeched by thousands of Walkers and all hell broke loose. He thought about tracks, now as dead as the marching infected, and how he followed first the Central then Circle Line deep into the heart of London. He’d walked for days and days, dodging the dead and living alike, desperately clinging to the only scrap of hope he had.

Regent’s Park.

If he could get there, then surely everything that had happened will not have been in vain.

Blinking quickly, John let the hazy blobs of light and colour that swam across his strained vision morph into proper, solid shapes. He lifted his head and looked for a sign.

Marylebone Road.

‘Damn!’ John cursed silently. He’d come up one station too far.

He’d been trying for Regent’s Park Station, but the chaos on the platforms (torn and painted over signs, bullet hole scarred tiles, extinguished electric panels, the stink of death and danger) had confused him. Still, he wasn’t too far from his destination. If he ran, he could probably make it to Regent’s Park in less than ten minutes.

He couldn’t give up. Not when he was so very close.

Steeling his nerve, John adjusted his grip on his only weapon. The metal was cool against his palm, the tip sharp and deadly, flecked with the black rust blood of Walkers. Holding it before him as if it were a bayonet and he was a solider in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, John peered around the abandoned street. He spotted the odd grey, straggling creature amongst the empty cars and cement barricades. They were slow but vicious when wound up in a famished frenzy and nothing riled them more than a warm, living, breathing human in their line of sight. If he kept quiet and hidden, John was sure he could get to Regent’s Park without incident.

Licking his lips and steeling his nerve, John took his first step forward.

MEOW

“Fuck!” John screamed, startled by the rage in his own voice (a voice he hadn’t heard with his own ears in ages). The tomcat’s hiss was vicious, and the ginger beast clawed at his ankle before it managed to yank its tail from under John’s foot and dash away along the trash laden gutter. The sound of John’s curse seemed to be amplified by the total emptiness of the street, the echo that bounced off the stone like a poltergeist trapped within the bowels of the city.

The few Walkers he’d spotted earlier had halted their aimless wandering to stare him down, their wet milky eyes piercing him with their hunger. The Walkers stumbled after him, their pace quicker than their usual preamble now they had prey to chase. Moving quickly, John started east on Marylebone Road but before he could get far hundreds of Walkers, all grey and rotten with jaws snapping for his flesh seemed to raise up from the ruins of the London. Their attention was centred only on him, the silly hedgehog who had run right into the badgers’ sett.

“Shit.”

His escape blocked, John had no choice. He retreated back towards the Underground entrance and turned right onto Baker Street. The Walkers took immediate chase, stumbling after him in a shuffling sort of stampede, and even though he was faster John knew he could never hope to outrun the rabid mob. Like ants they came out of every crevasse and shadow, from under cars and out of broken store front windows, once listless and blank until roused by the promise of their only sustenance. Heart hammering in a terrible panic, John desperately searched for safety. The buildings that lined Baker Street were all attached, offering no narrow pathways for John to slip through, no back garden in which he could find sanctuary, and every front door was barrica—

No! There was one door. Free from nails, boards, or barbed wire, it was black and the knocker askew and the numbers read 221 B, but all of that was only an afterthought as John reached out and pulled on the handle.

Locked.

“Damn it!” he hollered, moving to avoid the greasy bite of a Walker that looked like it had once been a pretty young girl save for the grotesque bite taken out of her right cheek. He stabbed her through the eye with his makeshift spear, shaking the weapon out of her skull with a slick tug, feeling nothing as the decayed mass fell to the pavement. He stabbed four more Walkers, taking in his surroundings. The horde was baring down on him, cornering him against the door of 221 B. He was trapped.

Anger, hot and irrational burned within John at the total injustice he felt. He did not survive this long, he did not leave Harry behind, he did not live in the Underground for so long just to die a helpless snack of the ravenous undead. Unleashing a battle cry worthy of his Scottish ancestors, John struck out again, taking down two more Walkers as the mob closed in, their rotten fingers tearing desperately at his clothes, their black spittle splashing against his skin as he leaped onto a bistro table of the delicatessen next to 221 B.

He jumped and heard the table crack, giving way under his weight as he reached up and managed to wrap his fingers around the steel frame of a valance. Holding his spear between his teeth, John swung his legs desperately, straining to lift himself up, barely feeling the fire in his left shoulder as he struggled to save his life. If he could just reach the wrought iron railing that lined the bottom ledge of the first floor window of 221 B then he could break into the flat and be safe.

The rod began to loosen, the scraping warning of screws ripping from brick inspiring John with a strength he didn’t know he had. Grunting for all of London to hear (was there anyone alive left to hear?) John pulled himself up and swung forward, managing to latch onto the railing just as the rod fell from its holdings, slashing down into the crowd of Walkers. Unable to believe his luck, John hoisted himself up along the window. Hooking his feet in-between the bars of the rail, he tested the window and found that it was open.

Relief, sweet and wonderful like dipping your body into a hot bath encompassed John’s very soul as he lifted the windowpane and ambled inside of the flat. He threw his weapon inside first, the clank of aluminum striking floor soundless against the dreadful drone of the undead. John twisted his body as he slipped in, turning so that he was looking down on the crush of Walkers crowding against the door, some even reaching for him as if he were a carrot on a string. Letting loose a laugh of absolute victory, John flipped off the milling undead before stepping back into the flat and shutting the window, muting the hungry groans.

He was safe, he was alive, and he would find a way to carry on.

He never heard the stranger sidle up behind him. He barely felt the shattering hit to the back of his head that sent him reeling to his knees before a second blow laid him flat on the carpet. He vaguely heard a voice, low and rumbling as if captured in a brook. He did remember a pair of eyes, shaped like a cat’s and grey as the fog that once hugged the streets of London, sharp and cunning with the tips of dark curls brushing against long lashes.

And then there was nothing.

He was back in the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a zombie apocolypse and all of the Sherlock cast is invited! The zombies and their science are very much based off of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, so all credit to him for that. I hope you enjoy this new story.


	2. Day 029

John wasn’t sure what pain was worse: the throb in his head, the tight numbness in his feet, the fire in his damaged shoulder, or the gnawing cramp in his stomach. It took all of his effort to force his body up into a sitting position, the long dark jacket that had been slung across him pooling in his lap as he took in his surroundings. He was still in the flat, in the sitting room of 221 B, and the steady groaning of the hungry dead was long gone, leaving only an endless silence that was more frightening somehow. It was dark too, save for a flickering orange glow that came from several nearly spent candles that had been arranged in the fireplace. Shifting, John’s back spasmed, a raw ache reeling up his spine and bursting throughout the scar on his shoulder. He choked on a yelp and gripped his old war wound. At least the pain meant he was still alive.

“Tea’s gone cold.”

Reacting on instinct John turned towards the direction the voice had come from. In the dim candlelight all he could make out were two long, lean legs jutting out from a chair near the hearth. His adrenaline pulsing through his veins, John reached for his trusty weapon so that he might defend himself.

“Oh, don’t let’s be dramatic,” the stranger sighed, his voice deep, posh, and dripping with exasperation. A hand, graceful and pale, raised the slim, compact aluminum spear. “Very elegant, using your old cane as a bayonet, but then I suppose being a solider it must have felt somewhat natural.” Long pale fingers twirled the cane deftly, the reflection of flames staining the metal shaft liquid orange. “Resourceful,” the voice continued when John didn’t speak, “and no doubt a relief when you no longer needed it to support your psychosomatic limp.”

“What?” John sputtered, taken aback. He had been certain there was no one left alive who knew about his limp, especially since he no longer had one. “How did you –”

“Because a cane is hardly one’s first option in a war against the undead. Not even a scavenger would pick up this skinny bit of metal and go through the trouble of sharpening the end into a spear. So it was something you had on hand, the only thing. And since people don’t use a cane unless they have to, you were injured, obviously. Your haircut suggests military and your fadding tan lines suggest you’ve been somewhere hot. Afghanistan or Iraq, by the way?”

“Afghanistan, but…but does that – and how—”

The stranger stopped twirling the cane and shifted in his chair. He turned to look at John, casting his features in sharp black shadows. The orange candlelight traced one high pointed cheekbone and made the mop of curls atop the man’s head seem to dance. The rest of his face was a black mask, keeping him hidden. Alone.

“I also took the liberty of giving you an examination after I knocked you out.”

“Ta, for that,” John murmured, raising his hand to inspect the bump to the back of his skull.

“No wounds to either of your legs, so the reason for the cane must have been psychosomatic. Your left shoulder, however, is decorated with a most interesting scar. Bullet wound, that’s obvious. AK-74 I imagine, long range. Shot in the infraspinatus, major damage to the scapula resulting in nerve damage that has left you with an intermittent tremor in your left hand.”

“That’s enough,” John stated firmly.

“Agreed,” the stranger replied before tossing the cane at John. Without flinching, John caught the cane with his left, not trembling hand and stared at the man, incredulous. “Excellent reflexes.”

There was a smile in the man’s voice, and John found himself intrigued. He put his cane down slowly, the sharp end clanking against a mug by his side that he hadn’t noticed before. John stared for a long time, wondering at this little piece of normal life that had seemed so lost to him just hours ago. Delicately, he picked up the china. He looked down into the amber filled well and found a single teabag drifting lazily at the bottom. Breathing deeply he smelled the stale but perfectly familiar aroma of Tips.

“You made me tea,” John said, awed.

“Of course I made tea, I’d already said I had. I don’t care for repeating myself, Dr. Watson.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Your wallet.”

On instinct, John clapped a hand over his breast, feeling for the familiar square of his wallet which he always kept secreted in an inner pocket of his jacket. It was empty.

“You stole my wallet!” he accused.

“Of course I did. You were unconscious for ages and while I’d deduced you were a soldier and a doctor and had been traversing the Underground for the last twelve days I couldn’t very well know your name, could I?”

“So you riffled through my things and took my wallet?” John snapped. “And I was only unconscious because you knocked me out!”

“I only knocked you out because you broke into my flat.”

“I didn’t know anyone was here!”

“Ignorance is not a good defence, Dr. Watson. It would never hold up in court, at least it wouldn’t if there were any courts left. And if you used your eyes and properly observed you would have known that this flat was, indeed, occupied.”

“I had thousands of Walkers itching to dig their teeth in me,” John defended.

“Distraction. Another flimsy excuse. The fact that the window was even open should have given you some pause.”

The stranger rose from his chair and stepped closer to John, crouching down so that his face was washed in the moon’s silver light as it pierced through the unbarred window. There were flecks of gold in his grey-green eyes and they jumped like stars as the man’s gaze roved over John. Everything about him seemed sharp, from his cheekbones to his pursed lips, to his fingertips held together under his chin. The only soft thing about him was his full head of dark curls, but even they suggested more of a dark mischievous character than anything else. Danger rippled off of the man and John felt his heartbeat hammer with excited force. He licked his lips, watched as the stranger’s gaze traced the trail his tongue had made, and waited.

“If you’re going to be this miserable over a borrowed wallet you’re going to have a conniption when you find out I’ve taken a blood sample.”

John’s brow crinkled and he gave the man a stern glower. “Just who the hell do you think you are?!” he demanded.

“The name is Sherlock Holmes,” the angled, curly topped, cat eyed stranger announced with all the flourish of a well-seasoned West End performer. He smiled at John, a wide, delighted, toothy grin that made him look ages younger and far less mysterious than he had moments ago. That, and John recognized the unusual name.

“Sherlock Holmes the detective?” he asked, recalling the stories in the papers, on the news, even the eager gossip of Mike Stamford who, if memory served John well, had encountered Sherlock Holmes often at St Bart’s. The man was a genius, most even said he was mad, and it didn’t surprise John at all that Sherlock Holmes, of all people, had managed to survive in this terrifying new world ensconced in the comforts of the old one.

“Consulting detective.” Sherlock stressed. He raised up from his crouched position, John’s mug of cold tea in hand as he walked towards the flat’s kitchen. Besides the candles burning lowly in the fireplace, there was not a single light to be found in 221 B. Sherlock moved through his home in pitch blackness, knowing it masterfully even in the dark. “I don’t imagine there’s much use for a consulting detective now,” he continued. “Now when people turn up dead it’s as a reanimated corpse. No mystery there. It’s all very boring, actually.”

“People too busy being torn apart by the undead rather than being more creatively murdered. Bit rude of them, isn’t it?”

To John’s surprise, Sherlock chuckled at the sarcasm, his chortles smooth and shattering and very lovely. It made his cock twitch in interest, which startled John as he hadn’t felt even the remotest twinge of arousal since he’d been shot four months ago. Glad that the shadows in the flat would mask the flush he could feel staining his cheeks, John shuffled in his place on the carpet, his fingers running over the warm woolly marvelousness of the dark coat draped over his legs. He realized that the coat surely belonged to Sherlock, no doubt the striking black Belstaff he’d so often been photographed in.

“Here,” Sherlock said, going to John and holding out his palm. John took it, watched as his hand was practically consumed by Sherlock’s long, limber fingers, and let himself be helped to his feet. “Sit by the fire and drink this.”

A cut crystal old double old fashioned was pushed into his free hand as Sherlock tugged on the other to direct John to a chair. Sitting down, John kept his eyes locked on Sherlock who took a seat opposite him. The man sighed and raised his own glass in a salute. John copied the gesture and took a deep swallow, pleasantly surprised to find his tongue tingling with the pleasurable taste of Glenfiddich. The scotch burned delightfully down his throat and warmed his hollow, hungry belly. He smiled at Sherlock who smiled back, and John took the time to really examine his attacker and host.

He was dressed impeccably, not at all like a man who was facing the end of the world. His dark trousers looked like they had been freshly pressed, long legs crossed at the knee with all of the authority of a ruling monarch. His shoes were polished to a fine sheen and they reflected the flames from the candles. He was wearing a button down shirt of indiscernible dark colour that hugged his trim waist and seemed to strain over his chest. The jacket no doubt matched the trousers. And over it all he wore a tartan dressing down that flowed around him like a cape. John was unsure if Sherlock looked more like a prince or Batman, but what he did know was that Sherlock Holmes was fit. Very, very, fit.

He took another large sip of scotch.

It was all so surreal, sharing a drink with a handsome stranger (a renowned stranger, almost a celebrity, and fit, had he mentioned fit?) and being warmed by a fire in a comfortable flat as if nothing at all was wrong with the world. For one splendid minute, everything felt right.

“You can stay here, Dr. Watson, so long as you don’t get in my way?” Sherlock said as he finished his drink.

“Your way?” John asked, taken aback both by the offer and the rude delivery.

“Yes. I may have been a consulting detective once, but I have always been, first and foremost, a scientist. I am conducting experiments, you see, important experiments, ones that could change this deplorable world. I need to concentrate. I can’t have any distractions, is that clear?”

“Um, listen, Mr. Holmes –”

“Sherlock, please.”

“Sherlock,” John started slowly. “I appreciate the invitation, but before I ended up here I was making my way to the Regent’s Park Quarantine Zone. Since you need the space to work, perhaps it would be better if I just left in the morning.”

“If you think you’ll find salvation in Regent’s Park then I’m going to have to disappoint you, Dr. Watson. That quarantine collapsed weeks ago. There’s nothing left.”

John inhaled sharply, studying Sherlock, looking for the tiniest sign of deception and found none. An awful curling dread wrapped around his organs like the crushing vice of a snake’s body, breaking the bones and suffocating the life out of its prey. He finished his scotch in two gulps, never really tasting the hot liquor as he slouched in the chair and closed his eyes.

He’d known, of course, that the odds of the quarantine holding up when all of the others hadn’t was slim to none, but it had been the hope of getting there that had kept him going for so long. It had been what he and Harry had planned as soon as her council estate had been condemned and burned by the army at the very start of this whole mess. Now, John would never make it to a safe place…he would never be able to keep the last promise he had made to his sister.

“You are a doctor,” Sherlock said after a time. John nodded. “I could use a doctor. Your knowledge would be beneficial to the experiments I’m conducting.”

“Oh really?”

“Truly. And besides, there’s food, and tea, and a second bedroom upstairs. It’s yours if you’d like.”

John rubbed his face. He was hungry and tired and a real bed sounded like the best proposition in the world at that moment. He opened his eyes and saw Sherlock leaning forward in his chair, arm outstretched.

“What do you say, Dr. Watson? Flatmates?”

He had a strange look in his eyes, something between desperation and loneliness. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes had been alone too long. Lord knows, John had been. And really, the only thing more terrifying than the end of the world was having to face it alone.

Smiling, John took Sherlock’s hand in his and shook it firmly, the orange light from the candles seeming to circle their joined palms in a ceremonial, binding magic.

“Call me John. And yes, flatmates. That’s fine. It’s all fine.”


	3. Day 036

“John, if you are going to continue to bore me with useless facts about stars then I will have no choice but to chuck you out to be chewed alive by your Walkers.” 

“You’d never. Who would get you tea whenever the whim to drink strikes you? Or hand you slides of grey matter all the way from the other side of the table?” 

Sherlock hummed noncommittally and took the slide that John had just handed him and placed it under the lens of his microscope, his concentration completely occupied by the task. 

John rolled his eyes and took the empty mug by Sherlock’s elbow and placed it in the sink. Sighing, he leaned against the counter and looked out the narrow kitchen window. It was well past midnight, the city so dark that it reminded John of those endless nights in the desert when the only sound that could be heard for miles was his own breathing. It had been peaceful and lonely all at once, but there had always been the stars dancing across the velvet black canvass of the sky to keep him company. They still shone. No matter that the world was savaged by the dead, they still twinkled above London and John felt that same surge of peaceful isolation in his bones. It made Sherlock’s ignorance (and undisguised disdain) even more irritating. 

“I don’t understand how a mad genius –“ 

“High-functioning sociopath.” 

“An emotionally constipated drama queen with a bit of smarts,” John countered, feeling a spark of triumph when Sherlock’s spine stiffened and he turned away from his microscope to pin John with a scandalized, open-mouthed expression of protest. It made John lick his lips as he imagined, just for a moment, those lovely wet lips being put to better use. “It’s primary school stuff, Sherlock!” he argued, more out of horny frustration than an actual desire to be right. “The Earth rotates around the sun; everyone knows that!” 

“I’m sure not everyone –“ 

“Everyone.” 

“Well if I ever did know then I’ve deleted it.” 

“Do you do delete things often?” 

“Only useless things,” Sherlock said, returning to his microscope. “And since understanding the earth’s rotation has never been necessary to solving a crime and most certainly will not help me understand this plague, there is no need to keep such clutter in my Mind Palace.” 

“Not the Mind Palace again,” John muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

John’s first week living with Sherlock Holmes had easily been the most interesting and equally aggravating seven days of his whole life. The man was brilliant, no doubt, but he was also mad in a Mad Hatter kind of way that John hadn’t decided was a very good or very bad thing yet. It also made him wonder if he was the March Hare or Alice in the middle of Sherlock’s mad tea party, at times the man’s accomplice and partner, and at other times just a passing witness to the insanity that was Sherlock’s lifestyle, especially that insufferable Mind Palace, which John had become acquainted with quite quickly after first finding himself in 221 B. 

After that first meeting, when they’d finished their scotch and Sherlock had pointed John in the direction of the second bedroom that he was welcome to make his own, John had believed himself a truly lucky man, falling asleep in a real bed under real sheets, his head cushioned on a real pillow for the first time in weeks. He slept heavy and deep, the moans of the dead, dying and undead leaving him in peace in the safety of the little flat. 

Then he’d woken up the next day…

* * *

 

_Sherlock was catatonic. The man was still sitting upright in his chair by the now cold fireplace, empty tumbler clutched loosely in his fingers as he stared at the empty space in front of him, quiet, still, and unnerving._

_John scratched his head as he observed the scene, uncomfortable as he tried to understand what was happening. He approached Sherlock carefully, calling his name, first as a whisper, then louder and louder until he was finally screaming in his ear._

_And nothing._

_John flicked Sherlock’s nose, pinched his shoulder, gave him a few firm shakes, ruffled his hair, even squeezed his thigh, trying anything to get a reaction out of the man. Nothing. He thought about slapping Sherlock but decided against that. He was still breathing evenly and his heart was beating at a regular rate, his pupils responded to light and his pulse was normal. Seeing as there were no obvious health concerns for John to worry over, he did the only other thing he could think of to take control of the situation: he made tea._

_Sherlock kept two large rain barrels of fresh water in the hall by the bathroom since running water was now a luxury of the past. He had also used a portable generator to keep power running only to the refrigerator, the hulking appliance humming with life the only sound in the flat. There was a kerosene stove on the counter however, and John made quick work of turning the device on and placed a pot of water on the ring._

_As he waited for the water to boil, John ransacked the cupboards, seeking only the bare necessities to make a proper cuppa. The larder, however, was in a state. It was fairly bare, to the point John was sure Old Mother Hubbard was laughing at him. He was able to find a half dozen stale jammy dodgers on a butter dish, and there was one drawer that was full to bursting with single serving sugar packets. He suspected that Sherlock might like sugar in his tea and took a few, placed the biscuits on a chipped sandwich platter, and found the tea bags in an unmarked canister under the sink. Now all he needed was milk._

_Opening the fridge, John was not surprised to find that it was just as pathetically stocked as the rest of the larder. There were a few withered vegetables, some cheese that was growing green mold along one side, a bag of browning pears, some cooked chicken breast of questionable sell-by date, and all by itself on the centre rack a curious rectangular Tupperware container. It had been labelled with a harsh scrawl along all four sides and on the lid, the same five letters in dark black ink spelling_ ‘ **MOLLY** ’. 

_Perplexed, John pulled the container out and placed it on the table. He could make out the shape of something inside and it was certainly weighty enough that John wondered if it might be a small ham or leg of lamb. He pinched the edge of the top, the plastic making that rude burp noise when the seal was broken, and started to pry it open. He caught sight of something moist and wrinkly before a hand clamped down over his, forcing John to reseal the container._

_Startled, he looked up at Sherlock, confused by the crazed scowl the man pinned on him._

_“You idiot!” Sherlock snapped, squeezing his fingers over John’s hand with surprising strength._

_John’s gut instinct was to punch Sherlock squarely in the face, but he knew that the man was no real threat (and John truly had not desire to make a mess of that striking nose or those pretty teeth). He was actually quite relieved that Sherlock was up and moving and speaking, even if he was acting like a lunatic._

_“Good morning,” John greeted, pulling his hand away from Sherlock’s. Ignoring him, the other man took the Tupperware container in his hands as gently as if it were a baby and placed it back in its spot in the fridge._

_“What did you think you were doing?” he snapped._

_“Looking for milk,” John answered._

_“Milk? Ridiculous,” Sherlock huffed, opening a cupboard and throwing down a bag of powdered milk onto the middle of the table. “There’s your damn milk, John!”_

_“Ta,” he said, although he was a bit put off by the idea of having to use the grainy substitute in his morning cuppa. “And don’t be so techy when you had me worried that you’d had a stroke.”_

_“You very nearly ruined the most important experiment in the world, so I have every right to be upset. And why on earth would you suggest I’d had a stroke! What sort of doctor are you?”_

_“What was all that catatonic nonsense in the sitting room, then? You weren’t responding to anything, Sherlock. It was like you were in a coma. When I couldn’t get a rise out of you I thought I’d make a cup of tea while I tried to sort it out!”_

_“How very English of you!” Sherlock countered childishly. “I was in my Mind Palace, John. I was perfectly safe. No stroke. No coma. Mind Palace.” He punctuated his declaration with a sharp tap to his temple._

_“You say that like I know what a Mind Palace is,” John snorted, seeing that the water was boiling and continuing with making tea for two. He didn’t even notice how Sherlock began working around him, digging up two mugs and teaspoons and setting the table while John busied himself with the tea. They moved together in the kitchen like they had been doing so for years, easily twisting and turning around one another, reaching and passing without having to say a word; perfect synergy._

_“My Mind Palace is my greatest resource,” Sherlock said as he nibbled on a jammy dodger and sipped his tea. “It is where I keep every piece of valuable information I have ever come across. I memorize it, store it, and, when I have need for it, I pull it out like one would a library book.”_

_“And you don’t go to an actual library because…”_

_“This is quicker,” Sherlock said haughtily. “I told you that I sometimes don’t speak for days. You said it was all fine.”_

_“You never told me you don’t speak for days,” John protested._

_“Didn’t I? I could have sworn you were here.”_

_“In bed, perhaps?” John suggested, flabbergasted when Sherlock simply shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the matter altogether, as if John’s not being present in the room when Sherlock had told him something was entirely the former’s fault. Part of John wanted to argue, but he knew when a battle was lost before it even began. Sherlock was stubborn, and strong-willed, and pompous, and looking a bit too good at the moment, even if he was acting posher than the Queen. There really was no point in starting a fight. All John could do was accept the situation and try to make the best of it. “So your Mind Palace. Go there often?”_

_“When the need presents itself. Sometimes I get lost in there for hours.”_

_“Right. And that…whatever it was. In the fridge._ **MOLLY** _?”_

_Sherlock’s flippant behaviour changed instantly. He went stiff and sober and, John almost believed, sad. But whatever remorse glossed over his grey-green eyes disappeared before John could get a proper look, and instead he found himself being pierced with that intense, hardened, dangerous stare that made his pulse quicken and his cock twitch. John crossed his legs and waited for the answer…_

* * *

 

“I think that’s enough for today, Sherlock,” John said, putting the scalpel in a tray of disinfectant. “It’s nearly three. Time to rest.” 

“What is your obsession with time and sleep, John?” Sherlock scoffed. “It’s the end of the world. Not as if you have to work a shift at the A&E.” 

“No, just babysit you, which is more exhausting if I’m honest,” John said fondly. “Come on. Go to bed. **MOLLY’s** not going anywhere.” 

“I’m close, John. I’m sure I am.”  
  
“I believe you,” John said gently. “But you’re not going to find a cure to this plague if your brain is loopy because you’ve refused sleep for thirty-six hours.” 

“Thirty-five and two thirds,” Sherlock corrected, leaning away from his microscope. He arched his back and cracked his spine, rolling his shoulders to ease the stiffness of having been slouched over a table for so long. John was tempted to offer Sherlock a massage, but he wasn’t certain his suggestion would be well received, nor was he so sure that his proposal was all that innocent. 

Muffling a chuckle as Sherlock slid from his stool and shuffled slowly towards his bedroom, John made quick work of cleaning up the kitchen. He wiped down the table, put all of Sherlock’s tools to soak in water and disinfectant, and made sure to put the slides of grey matter back in their proper order in the box marked ‘Frontal Lobe – Left Hemisphere’. He put Sherlock’s notebooks of his observations by his chair in the sitting room, knowing his flatmate would want to review them when he finally woke up. 

In truth, John wasn’t so certain that Sherlock would find a cure. The Walkers were dead, and there was nothing in modern medicine that could cure that. But perhaps there was a way to make one immune to the virus caused when one was bitten or scratched by the Walkers. That was at least something to hope for. And surely, if there was anyone left alive in the world who could find that kind of cure, it was Sherlock Holmes. 

Mind Palaces and social ineptitude aside, John found Sherlock to be a very remarkable man. He used his amazing mind like a weapon, applying his principles of the science of deduction to see the world around him unlike any other human. Sherlock could find a whole person’s history in the turn-ups of their jeans and the stubble on their jaws. Motives were unable to hide in the brand of one’s perfume or the style of their manicure. Motes of dust held whole histories for Sherlock to unravel. Cigarette ash could be the very tool that determined guilt or innocence if Sherlock Holmes was on the case. He’d shown off his deductive reasoning on more than one occasion in the last week, standing with John by the window and taking in the lumbering undead in the street, pointing out one grey face after another and telling John who they’d been before they’d been turned. 

It had been fun. 

And that was a bit not good, having fun in the middle of the apocalypse, but John couldn’t find it in himself to care. Sherlock had a way of doing that, of making strange mad things seem completely normal. Things like giggling at the end of the world. 

Things like keeping a diseased brain in his refrigerator in a Tupperware container marked ‘ **MOLLY’**...

* * *

_“So…Molly. She was your….your, um, girlfriend?”_

_“Girlfriend? Not really my area.”_

_“Oh, right, right…right. Friend, then?”_

_“She was a colleague. Certainly not the best mortician in the city, but her appreciation of the Work more than made up for it. She gave me nearly anything I asked for. Toes, tongues, even part of a jaundiced liver once.”_

_John simply nodded, looking away from Sherlock to inspect the brain that lay so innocuously in the Tupperware container between them. As far as adult brains went, it was of average size and colour, although there was a peculiar black mold that twisted along the cerebellum from the brain stem, and the frontal lobe (at least, what was left of the frontal lobe as Sherlock had cut a fair bit of it away) seemed to be swollen, inflamed as if by infection._

_“Were you with her when she…changed?” John wondered._

_“I was at Bart’s when this whole mess began,” Sherlock confessed, running his long fingers_ _through his hair, ruffling the curls as if that might dislodge the memories he was confessing. “It’s difficult to pinpoint a zero hour of the event since reanimation has proven in my observations to be different for each corpse, but that first wave…so many simply sat up on the examining tables in the morgue. Molly was in the middle of an autopsy on a woman who was the victim of, what was thought to be a wild animal attack as large chunks of flesh had been bitten off of her. She told me she’d had her hands around the heart when the body suddenly lunged for her. It got her colleague first, a student, and while he was too busy being eaten alive Molly ran away from the morgue and right into me. I’d been on my way down to observe. I was…I was bringing her coffee.”_

_Sherlock said that last bit as if it had been a revelation. Or a regret._

_“That was nice,” John offered, hoping Sherlock would continue._

_“I never brought her coffee, not once in the three years I’d known her. Strange that the last time we were together…I was bringing her coffee for the first time.”_

_John didn’t know what to say to comfort his new friend. He waited silently until Sherlock was ready to continue._

_“We were trapped in Bart’s for six days. It was chaos. The hospital was overtaken in a matter of hours, brimming at the seams with walking corpses. No one could get in or out. We were stuck. And then finally, we had an opening. A military troupe tried to seize Bart’s and beat back the creatures. They were outnumbered, obviously, but the distraction was what Molly and I needed to escape. We’d already planned to come back here, to Baker Street. We’d wait it out, we’d experiment on the turned, we’d figure out what was the cause behind this madness.”_

_John sensed the ‘but’, awful and terrifying like the monsters children feared lived in the darkness. He licked his lips and held his breath._

_“But she ran back. Said she’d left something in her office, something important. I was stupid to believe her, stupider still to let her go back on her own. I told her five minutes and no more else our window of opportunity would be lost. When she didn’t return after fifteen, I already knew what I would find when I went after her. Two of those…things, were pounding on her office door. I could see the blood, fresh, and too much of it for the injury to be a simple flesh wound. I dispatched the monsters and found Molly inside. Her right arm, it had been pulled away from her body, like she was just a paper doll. And there was a bite, too. One of them had got her here,” Sherlock indicated the back of his neck._

_John cringed in sympathy, imagining the helplessness Sherlock must have felt in that moment, seeing the oozing bite and knowing Molly only had a matter of time._

_“Such a waste, John. She’d gone back for a photograph. Important?! The idiot. What good was a photograph going to do her once we’d escaped? And now the silly stupid thing had gotten herself killed.”_

_“It must have been important to her,” John reasoned, a bit taken aback by Sherlock’s condemnation. He thought of his own personal treasures, things that would seem silly to others but meant more than heaven or hell to him, including a cracked, faded photograph of the Watson family (grandparents, mum, da, Harry and baby-faced ten year old John) that was in his wallet and had gone with him everywhere (uni, Afghanistan, the Underground). He imagined Molly had run back to grab a picture of her family. Her parents, perhaps a boyfriend._

_“It was her cat, Toby,” Sherlock drawled, breaking John out of his sympathetic stare. “I don’t even understand why she bothered. The blasted thing was more than likely dead after having not been fed for six days. Why go back for a picture?”_

_“Sentiment,” John answered simply, although he did agree with Sherlock that getting yourself bitten by a Walker over a picture of your most likely dead pet was more than a bit silly. He wasn’t about to tell Sherlock that, however. “What happened after?”_

_“She died, what else do you think happened?”_

_“She died and you just decided to help yourself to her brain? For science?”_

_Sherlock narrowed his gaze at John, not at all pleased with the assumption._

_“She asked me to stay with her until she changed. She told me to watch as it happened, to watch her die and come back. Since I was responsible for letting her go alone, abiding by her final wishes was the very least I could do.”_  

_“And afterwards you took her brain to study it.”_

_“Do give me some credit, John. I didn’t just help myself. Molly asked me to, very specifically, in fact. She asked me to wait until she reanimated and then told me to put her down as humanely as possible. I was then instructed to use her brain, to study it, to find a cure. So you can sit there and judge and question and be as put out about it as you want, John, but I am only honouring a dear fri…a brave woman’s last request.”_

_Sherlock crossed his arms and legs and turned away from John, staring at the humming fridge while John simply stared at Sherlock’s profile, taking in the story he’d just heard and feeling his perception of this great man shift._

_So, not as removed from his emotions as he liked to let on. After all, Sherlock was very obviously gutted over Molly’s death, still blamed himself in fact for the whole unfortunate business, but he masked that all under the demeanour of the cool scientist seeking a cure. It was clearly how Sherlock chose to deal with his feelings (and feelings he most certainly did have, no matter that he shuddered at the very thought of sentiment) and who was John to judge him for that? Besides, while the whole situation was more that bizarre, the fact remained that a woman John didn’t even know had made what might possibly be the most important donation in the history of humankind._

_A sacrifice like that deserved to be recognized._

_“To Molly,” John toasted, raising his mug high over the table in a show of true respect. Sherlock turned to look at John and saw the gesture, recognized the sincerity in the action, and his shoulders almost seemed to sag with relief. With a small, sad smile, Sherlock raised his mug too, and clinked it delicately against John’s._

_“To Molly,” he echoed…_

* * *

John smiled at the memory of that morning that felt like so long ago, but had only been just a mere seven days in his past. It didn’t take a consulting detective to see that Sherlock did not share himself with just anyone, and the fact that he’d told such a personal story to John only confirmed that there was a camaraderie between the two men that was instant and binding. John understood Sherlock with the same certainty that he understood himself and he didn’t bother to question the insanity of such a surety. 

John felt completely confident in saying that he knew the real Sherlock Holmes, the scientist, the detective, the smartarse, the very much **_not_** a sociopath. 

After all John knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that sociopaths didn’t keep diseased brains in their fridge and labelled them ‘ **MOLLY’** , high-functioning or otherwise.


End file.
